WASHINGTON, April 28 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The AFL-CIO Metal
Trades Department (MTD) is calling for congressional oversight hearings to
investigate the failure of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness
Compensation Program (EEOICP) to provide adequate benefits to nuclear
weapons workers and survivors victimized by radiation or exposure to toxic
agents in their work environment. MTD President Ron Ault charged that the
program--designed to compensate the victims of nuclear exposure in
Department of Energy nuclear research and development projects from the
mid-

1940s through the present-- has:

-- Wasted more than one-third of its multi-billion dollar allocation on

top-heavy administrative costs;

-- Splintered operations and responsibilities among several agencies;

-- Frustrated claimants and survivors with drawn-out and faulty

claims-processing;

-- Imposed an impossible burden on victims to verify claims rather than the

government;

-- Relied on nonexistent or inadequate government records; and

-- Ignored a congressional mandate to report the massive burden of

occupational disease among these workers; and

-- Failed to recommend standards for preventing future cases.

"It's shameful to see how the highest ideals of the sponsors of this
legislation have been hijacked by a bureaucracy intent on evading
responsibility and avoiding justice," declared Metal Trades Department
President Ron Ault. "Congress directed that the government should provide
equity and relief to the workers who became sick as a result of their
service to the nation during a time of national need. Instead, the
bureaucracy has built a maze of rules and arbitrary barriers designed to
frustrate legitimate claims."

"During the era of the Cold War, thousands of men and women worked
selflessly, putting what they were told was the national interest ahead of
their personal health and safety. Many of these workers never were told of
the dangers they faced. And, because of strict secrecy and classification
standards, they never even disclosed to their families what they were
doing. Furthermore, also out of secrecy concerns, much of this work was
compartmentalized, creating additional confusion over what types of
exposures and risks these workers encountered during their careers. Now,
after the crisis has passed, and many of these same workers have become
chronically ill--and many have died as a result of their exposures-- we
ask: What kind of country would turn its back on them and their survivors?
We implore Congress to revisit this legislation and take the necessary
steps to make sure that these workers are not neglected, and their
contributions are not forgotten," Ault said.

Since this legislation was enacted eight years ago, the program has
wasted at least one-third of the money that Congress provided on overhead
and administrative costs while splintering adjudication and administration
among a number of federal entities. While the program has paid out some
$3.5 billion in benefits--and at least $1 billion in administrative
costs--there remain hundreds if not thousands of unpaid, lost and derailed
claims languishing in file boxes in the Department of Labor (DOL), the
Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Institute of Occupational
Safety and Health (NIOSH).

The program has been crippled from the outset. Initially, DOE told
Congress it expected 3,000 claims under the new law. Within two years after
enactment, some 40,000 claims had been received and DOE had made only one
award.

According to an investigation conducted for the MTD by Sheldon W.
Samuels of the Ramazzini Institute and Drexel University's School of Public
Health, the Department of Energy had run up a woeful record of failures in
administering the program in its first three years of life -- failing to
work with state workers compensation commissions; hiring merely one
part-time physician on staff and 100 contract physicians to review cases--
when it needed a minimum of 500; developing a helter-skelter system for
reviewing and processing claims; hiring an unqualified contractor under a
no-bid contract to set up its electronic data system; dismissing its
advisory committee of workers' compensation experts after the committee
criticized DOE's operations; and overspending on administrative costs
fourfold.

The operations of other agencies with responsibilities under the act as
amended to repair DOE's failure in 2004 were not much better. NIOSH was
assigned to assess radiation exposure claims. It has only recently begun to
update biomedical data originally developed from studies of veterans
exposed to radiation during atomic tests in the 1940s and 50s and
cancer-related deaths among Japanese survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Even

the DOL was appalled by the work NIOSH was doing in processing EEOICP
claims, sending some two-thirds of the claims NIOSH processed back for
re-work. An audit of NIOSH processes found some 14.5 percent of claims it
handled were erroneously rejected.

The union found many survivors who have applied for benefits have been
told that they must produce medical and other records in order to
prevail--records from 20 to 30 years ago. Virtually all workers involved
with nuclear weapons research and development were sworn to secrecy about
their work--forbidden to discuss it with spouses or family members.
Consequently, many legitimate survivor claimants may not even know they are
eligible, the union said.

Responsibility for administering benefits for former nuclear weapons
workers originally had been split between the Department of Energy and the
Department of Labor, with DOE assuming responsibility for "toxic illnesses"
and DOL handling conditions specifically related to exposure from
beryllium, silicosis and radiation. In 2004, the amended act gave NIOSH
responsibility for radiation dose reconstruction. The Metal Trades
Department has charged that the agencies have adopted processes that shift
an impossible burden of proof on many claimants: finding records that were
never made or were never accurate, or no longer exist.

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